Kim Peterson
Director, Environmental & Sustainability Development
Morton Salt
Kim Peterson is the Director of Environmental and Sustainability Development at Morton Salt. Kim is also responsible for Morton’s subsidiaries in Canada, the Bahamas, Chile, Peru and Brazil. She joined Morton in 2017 and created its sustainability strategy and implementation plan from the ground up. She and her team are working to create sustainability as a culture and mindset from the C-level suite executives down to the front-line hourly employees. An example of Morton’s progress in the area of sustainability under Kim’s leadership is the implementation of its first closed loop wastewater system for one of its oldest and largest salt mines in the United States. She works closely with other leaders in the company on issues such as sustainable supply chain issues and preventing food waste.
Kim’s career has spanned 20+ years in the field of Environmental Health Safety & Sustainability. Prior to joining Morton, she worked for Amazon handling its complex environmental and hazardous material issues on a global scale (China, the EU, Canada, India and the US). She got her start in manufacturing working in the paper and ink manufacturing sectors and then later moved on to non-metallic mineral mining (gypsum mining at United States Gypsum Company (USG)).
Kim has always been passionate about not only EHS&S topics, but also diversity and inclusion efforts. During her time at USG, Kim led the employee resource group for women – called “Women Rock.” Under her leadership, this resource group created a specialized onboarding program for women entering the heavily male dominated mining industry, as well as organizing and leading workshops to teach women in a pragmatic and practical way how to increase their own “social equity” inside the company.
Kim earned her Master of Science in Environmental Management and Sustainability from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Stuart Graduate Business school in 2009. She has been a guest speaker at the National Safety Council and the Alliance of Hazardous Materials Professionals. When she is not championing causes around sustainability, diversity and inclusion you can find her playing with her dogs Martes & Ranger, hiking on beautiful trails in our national & state parks, biking on the Illinois Prairie Path and avidly reading… from paperback books borrowed from her local library.